


like figures in the distance (hard to hold)

by Teaotter



Category: Maybe Sprout Wings - The Mountain Goats (Song)
Genre: Depression, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24299677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter
Summary: Charlie draws it over and over again. On the mirror, on the envelopes of junk mail, on post-it notes at the office. The cartoon of himself, dumpy and hapless. The monster in the background, spiky and dark. It gets closer every time.Some days, he wishes it would hurry up.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 6
Collections: Jukebox 2020





	like figures in the distance (hard to hold)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



Charlie’s mornings are predictable. Wake up ten minutes before the alarm with a nightmare he won’t remember. Shower off the stress-sweat. Dress in forgettable clothes, grab an everything-bagel from the coffee stand on the corner, and catch the bus to the office. 

Sometimes he washes up in front of those locked doors on a Saturday morning, like an old shoe adrift on the tide. Those are bad days.

His therapist used to ask him about the nightmares. Charlie understands why she’d ask: they’re the only interesting thing about him. But he honestly doesn’t remember, no matter how hard his heart is pounding when he wakes up. He got tired of having to say that, and after a while he stopped answering the reminder calls from her office. 

There’s no one else to ask him anything. Not any more. But that doesn't mean he's given up.

A few weeks ago, Charlie’d tried setting his alarm earlier. He thought if he was lucky, he might skip the dream entirely. If not, maybe he'd wake up in the middle and be able to remember something. It’d be different, at least, and that had to be better.

The alarm caught him in the middle. He still doesn’t remember, not really, but it wasn’t _gone_ the way it was before. He knows there was something lumbering and dark, something he couldn't get away from. It just kept stumbling along behind him -- not even chasing him, but -- too big to avoid.

In the bathroom, afterward, he’d stared at the foggy shapes in the mirror, misted over by steam. If he squinted, he could make out the shape of a person -- him, like a cartoon of himself -- and something lurking far in the background. A dark shape, glimpsed in the shadow of the window. 

Charlie traced lines on the mirror: himself, the window, the darkness. It was satisfying to see it there in front of him. Evocative, like he’d finally drawn something that could maybe, kinda, be art. Bad art, something he’d post on the internet and no one would see. But maybe it said what he wanted it to say. It felt real.

Since then, he’s drawn it over and over again. On the mirror, on the envelopes of junk mail, on post-it notes at the office. The cartoon of himself, dumpy and hapless. The monster in the background, spiky and dark. It gets closer every time he draws it, both of them fumbling blindly in the same direction.

Charlie knows it isn’t real. It’s just a metaphor for his depression, or his age, or his loneliness. It’s not even a particularly scary monster. He’s not a good enough artist for that, and besides, he’s not really scared of it.

Some days, he wishes it would hurry up and catch him. At least he could stop waiting for it.

* * *

One day Charlie wakes up well before dawn, heart pounding and tears streaming down his face. It’s too early for the nightmare, hours before his alarm is supposed to go off, but he knows it’s the same dream.

The same completely forgettable dream, slipping away from him just like everything is slipping away from him. His life is a sinking balloon, every thought that could lift him up slowly leaking through his skin and escaping into thin air. He's surprised to find himself still in bed, and not dragged all the way down to the floor, too empty to hold himself up. 

There’s never anyone here but him and the monster, no one to tell him he's real. He doesn’t even have his therapist to talk with any more, to ask him what he’s forgotten.

He just wants to talk to someone.

* * *

“Hello?”

Charlie stares down at the phone in his hand. He hadn’t meant to-- hadn’t meant to call anyone, it’s the middle of the night. He’s not even sure which buttons he pushed, but he’d know that voice anywhere. “Ben.”

It’s been a long time.

“Charlie?” Ben groans, and something rustles in the background. “What the fuck, it's four in the morning.”

“I'm sorry.” Charlie slides down the side of the bed onto the floor, still clutching the phone. He tries not to sound like he’s been crying. 

“Are you drunk?”

“I'm sorry,” he says again. The words echo; it's something he’s said a lot to Ben, over the years. “I shouldn't have... I just.”

The words disappear like water spiraling down the drain. He really shouldn’t have.

“Fuck. It's four in the morning.” More noises on the other end of the phone, moving around. “Fuck.”

There’s a tiny sliver of night sky visible through his window, over the roof of the building across the street. He didn’t know that before; he can’t see it when he lies down on the bed.

“Charlie, what's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Charlie slumps down further, and the sliver gets bigger. It would be easier to explain the night sky than what he’s feeling. It’s too big. “I shouldn't have called.”

“But you did.” Ben sighs, long and long-suffering. “Have you taken your meds?”

“Go back to sleep, Ben,” Charlie says, instead of answering. “I'm sorry.”

 _For everything,_ he means. Sorry for the fights and the worries and the tears, sorry for being the wrong person, sorry for making Ben cry so many times. Sorry for calling when it’s supposed to be over.

Hanging up is the least he can do.

When his phone buzzes in his hand, he almost doesn’t answer it. Ben should go back to sleep. Forget about Charlie, and late night phone calls. Pretend none of this happened.

But his phone keeps buzzing, and Charlie just can’t imagine letting Ben go to voice mail.

“I said I’m sorry.”

Another sigh. “You can't call me in the middle of the night and not tell me if you've taken your meds. You can’t do that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. Just tell me.”

“No.” The bottle is still on the kitchen counter, gathering dust. “I don't think so.”

“Go take it.”

“I'm supposed to take them in the morning.”

“It's four a.m., we're gonna call it morning.” Ben insists. “I'm gonna stay on the line and talk to you until you take it.”

Charlie feels the tears well up again at that. Like talking with Ben is some kind of punishment instead of a lifeline, a thin thread stretched down from a brighter world. 

“Christ, Charlie.” He hears Ben curse softly. “You're supposed to have your therapist on speed dial for this, not your ex.”

 _I can't do this any more._ One of the last things Ben said before he left. _I can’t watch you do this to yourself._ And here Charlie is, asking Ben to do it again. Lift him up.

“When's the last time you saw her, anyway?”

Charlie stumbles to his feet. Ben’s only talking to him to make sure he takes his medicine. The sooner he does that, the sooner Ben can stop.

“I'm dealing with it.”

Charlie fills a glass with water, and fumbles with the pill bottle until he gets one into his hand. He swallows. 

There should be a sense of relief, of doing what Ben needs him to do. It tastes like ashes.

“You don't know, do you?”

“No.” Charlie drinks the rest of the water, and sets the glass in the sink with a sharp noise. Everything is too loud these days, or too far away. “I took it. It’s okay, Ben.”

_I’m sorry._

“So what have you been doing, if you're not talking to Sheila?” Ben prompts. “To deal with it?”

“I.” He ought to let Ben go, but Charlie doesn’t have the strength to hang up again. “Drawing.”

“Drawing what?”

 _Like art therapy,_ Charlie means to say. But the words get stuck. It isn’t really therapy.

The breakfast table is an island barely visible on the horizon, but Charlie’s too tired to swim that far. So he sinks down onto the floor instead. One of the cabinet hinges digs into his shoulder blade, but he doesn’t care.

He finds himself telling Ben about the cartoons. About him and the monster from his dreams. How it keeps getting closer, but never quite close enough.

He runs out of words after a while. Ben’s breathing is the only noise from the other side. If Charlie closes his eyes, he can imagine that there’s someone else here with him. He wonders if he could call again some time, just to listen to Ben breathe. He knows it’s too weird to ask.

“Oh, Charlie.” When Ben finally speaks, he sounds sad. Charlie didn’t mean to make him sad. “Listen. It's never just you and the monster.”

“Yes, it is.” He’s drawn it often enough. Over and over and over again. 

“No, it isn't,” Ben insists. “I know you don't see it from where you are. It's hard to see sometimes. But it's not just the monster. There's a light there, somewhere, and it's coming for you, too. You just have to let it catch you.”

 _That’s an easy thing to say._ A normal thing. Normal people aren’t chased by pointless shadows. Normal people aren’t waiting for them to catch up. There’s no magic light to chase the darkness away.

But they’ve had this argument before.

 _You’re giving up,_ Ben told him, over and over again. _You’re not even trying any more._

It wasn’t true. It isn’t true. Just because no one sees him try--

“Just put it in the drawing next time, Charlie. One light. You’ll see. It’ll fit.”

He thinks about it. He can bring it up by memory now, him and the monster in the frame of the mirror. There’s room, off in the corner. He could put in a light. It would be much farther away than the monster, but that’s probably right. If there’s a light in his picture, it’s very far away from him.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” Charlie tips his head back against the cabinet, too tired to open his eyes again. “I’ll do it.”

* * *

Charlie wakes up on the kitchen floor, his face pressed into the cold linoleum. It’s the first time in a long time that he’s woken up without the nightmare -- but he had it earlier, didn’t he? Does that even count?

He lies there, blinking in the early morning light, trying to stitch together the scraps of conversation. He’d called Ben. He’d hung up on Ben, and Ben had called him back. 

He drags himself to the shower, last night’s sweat still stuck to his skin. When he gets out, he stares into the steam-filled mirror, just like every morning. He traces the lines: him and the monster. But this time, he puts in a tiny speck in the corner, like he'd promised. A light bulb, like a porch light left on in another life.

It looks wrong. It’s what he was thinking last night, but now that he sees it, there’s something missing.

_It’s coming for you, too._

Ah. Not a porch light, then. It isn’t waiting for him to come back. Good thing; he’d never make it back on his own.

He gives the light bulb a tiny pair of wings, then steps back to look at it again.

Now he feels foolish. It’s a cartoon light bulb with wings. It looks stupid. It reminds him of that computer thing, the talking paper clip, which was so ridiculous and annoying they made a meme out of it.

_It’s coming for you._

But how else is a light supposed to move? It could be on a train, maybe, but the headlight of a train is nothing Charlie wants to see coming toward him. There are lights on airplanes, but they never come close enough. It could be a flashlight; but then, there’d have to be someone carrying the flashlight. He doesn’t believe that anyone could carry a flashlight so far.

It’s just him, and the monster, and the light.

Charlie grits his teeth and gives the light bulb bigger wings. These are big, flashy wings, with curling feathers. There’s a hint of rainbow sheen at the edges -- just a streak on the mirror, sure, but yeah. Big-ass, fancy rainbow wings.

Charlie still feels ridiculous, but somehow less foolish. It’s a determined little light bulb. Of course it has big wings.

He’s dressing for work when his phone pings with a text from Ben. _Call Sheila._

Charlie turns the phone over. He’s not sure about calling his therapist; it’s been a long time, and the monster is still a hell of a lot closer than the light. But he saves Ben's text. He also sets an alarm to take his meds that night. Maybe they’ll help.

Halfway out the door, he stops. The mirror is long since clear, and it feels... Charlie isn’t sure how it feels. The drawings aren't real. He knows that.

But he goes back and digs an envelope out of the bin. There’s enough room on the back for a dumpy hapless guy, a boring everyday monster, and a determined little light bulb. 

He looks at it for a long moment, then sticks it in his pocket. He makes sure not to bend the edges.

He knows it’s silly to feel protective of a cartoon light bulb. It’s not real; it’s just a metaphor. But he really hopes the little light bulb wins.


End file.
